Cisco rolls more routers for smart grids

SAN JOSE, Calif. Ė Cisco Systems is shipping its first routers geared for networks of smart meters. The Series 1000 routers are part of a second wave of smart grid systems from a business unit the company set up two years ago to address the emerging market for digital networked utilities.

The new routers can aggregate traffic from more than 2,000 smart electric meters over a 900 MHz Internet Protocol network. Data is sent back to utility substations over optional 2G, 3G or WiMax links.

The routers were designed to work over wired or wireless IPv6 networks with Itronís Openway smart meter system as part of a partnership the two companies announced last year. The latest routers were officially announced on Jan. 17.

The model 1240 router is designed to be installed on utility poles in the US. The model 1120 is geared for sealed outdoor boxes used in Europe. Both are ruggedized for extreme weather conditions, substation standards such as IEEE 1613 and IEC 61850-3, use versions of existing Cisco router chips and have up to five slots to accommodate different wireless module options.

In tandem with the new routers, Cisco is rolling out LTE modules based on Sierra Wireless chips for its Series 2000 routers announced last year. The LTE modules link the routers in transmission and distribution substations to a variety of power monitoring and control systems installed there. The LTE modules are currently sold through Verizon with versions for AT&T and other utilities in the works.

In addition, Cisco announced its Connected Grid Network Management System, software to monitor and manage as many as ten million end points including the Series 1000 routers and smart meters. It also announced new services offerings.

Some utilities are planning to transition their substation networks from ISDN and DSL to LTE. They are also making plans to migrate so-called field-area networks from 2G and 3G to WiMax because WiMax supports greater distances between hops, said Sanket Amberkar, a director of product management for Cisco.

The company's smart grid group now has 85 paying customers including BC Hydro (Burnaby, British Columbia) and Sempra Energy (San Francisco), both of which are using the new Cisco 1000 series routers.

Cisco's Series 1000 router is a pole-mounted device that aggregates traffic from more than 200 smart meters.

Why is the radiation level 60-150 times higher than cell phone? I think the data is just for logging power related information which shouldn't be heavy traffic so I wonder even the transmitter on the meter doesn't need to dump data all the time. Besides, the transmitter should have been placed in areas not be easily touched. With much farther from human, I wonder how this radiation is different from the sea of micro-wave that we expose to every day (remember there are lots of base-stations and repeaters transmitting energy out to "talk" to all phones around).

HOW WILL CISCO AND OTHERS CONTINUE TO WORK IN THIS AREA NOW THAT A CALIFORNIA HEALTH DEPARTMENT IDENTIFIED SMART METERS AS DANGEROUS TO PERSONAL AND PUBLIC HEALTH?
CALIFORNIA HEALTH DEPARTMENT SMART METER HEALTH REPORT JANUARY 2012 (summary).
1. Smart Meters emit radiation almost continuously, day and night, seven days a week.
2. Family safety is uncertain with a smart meter attached to a home.
3. It is impossible to know how close a consumer is to their RF Radiation limit, making safety an uncertainty with installation of a mandatory Smart Meter.
4. Smart Meters can exceed the whole body radiation exposure of cell phones by 60-150 times.
5. Radiation exposure from Smart Meters at non-thermal levels shows accumulating evidence of human cell damage, DNA chain breaks, breaches in the blood-brain barrier, sperm damage, toxin exposure, cancer, miscarriage, birth defects, semen degradation, autoimmune diseases, etc.
6. Electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) is a real and sometimes debilitating neurological problem for the affected persons (Mild et al., 2004).
7. FCC guidelines do not protect the public and cannot be used for any claims of Smart Meter safety.
8. Smart Meters exceed the RF Microwave Radiation standards of many other countries by 12 to 60 million times.
9. SUMMARY: Given the evidence of existing and potential harm from Smart Meters, governmental agencies for protecting public health and safety should be much more vigilant towards Smart Meter electromagnetic radiation exposures because governmental agencies are the only defense against such involuntary exposure.